WND EXCLUSIVE

Obama to transform U.S. military into social workers

New focus on 'global warming,' poverty, 'injustice,' bolstering U.N.

Published: 07/30/2012 at 8:10 PM

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Progressive organizations behind White House policy have crafted specific, second-term plans for President Obama to transform the U.S. Armed Forces into a social work-style organization designed to combat “global warming,” fight global poverty, remedy “injustice,” bolster the United Nations and increase “peacekeeping” forces worldwide.

The groups, already instrumental in influencing Obama’s first-term defense agenda, call for massive, second-term slashes to the military budget. The savings are to be used to invest in “sustainable energy” and in fighting worldwide climate change.

The book, by New York Times bestselling authors Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott, uncovers the template for Obama’s next four years – the actual, extensive plans created by Obama’s own top advisers and progressive strategists.

Who needs a standing army?

“Fool Me Twice” documents how the major leagues of progressive groups with deep ties to the Obama administration got together to produce a comprehensive, 96-page report with specific recommendations for how Obama should reform the U.S. military during his second term in office.

This detailed blueprint, titled “A Report of the Task Force on a Unified Security Budget for the United States” (or 2012 Unified Security Budget), lays out a future Obama “defense” agenda.

The Unified Security Budget is a joint product of the Center for American Progress (CAP) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). Previous recommendations from the two groups’ yearly Unified Security Budgets have been adapted by the Obama administration.

The Center for American Progress, as “Fool Me Twice” relates, was behind some of Obama’s first term agenda. CAP is run by John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton who was co-chairman of President Obama’s 2008 White House transition team.

Podesta and CAP have had heavy influence on the crafting of White House policy. CAP routinely releases policy reports that are reportedly used in the formulation of Obama administration policy.

A Time magazine article profiled the influence of Podesta’s Center for American Progress in the formation of the Obama administration, stating that “not since the Heritage Foundation helped guide Ronald Reagan’s transition in 1981 has a single outside group held so much sway.”

See the “Fool Me Twice” trailer:

The article branded CAP as the “idea factory” of the Obama administration.

The 2012 Unified Security Budget itself recalls how the group’s policy recommendations from some of its recent defense papers have already been adopted by Obama’s Sustainable Defense Taskforce, which has notoriously recommended $1 trillion in cuts over 10 years.

Boasts the 2012 report: “A majority, though not a supermajority, of the members of the President’s Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform adopted the annualized figure of $100 billion, and many of the recommendations from this proposal.”

The report makes clear the stated objective of transforming the U.S. Armed Forces into an operation that emphasizes conflict resolution and diplomacy.

The report takes issue with the use of forces on the ground in various countries to secure or influence the longer-term strategic position of other nations.

It recommends scaling back all U.S. ground forces by 20 percent; reducing the Navy’s surface fleet by 20 percent – including two carriers and carrier combat air wings – and reducing the Air Force by two combat air wings, while cutting standing peacetime overseas deployments in Europe and East Asia by up to 50,000 troops at a time.

“Fool Me Twice” relates the Unified authors strongly argue for the reduction of the U.S. nuclear arsenal to no more than 292 deployed nuclear weapons and the complete elimination of the Trident II nuclear missile – a process Obama already initiated in April 2010 when he signed a deal with Russia reducing stocks of weapons-grade plutonium.

The accord with Russia was signed at a nuclear summit in Washington arranged by Obama at which leaders of 47 nations committed to reducing the world’s nuclear stockpiles. One week earlier, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and Obama signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, committing both countries to reducing their deployed nuclear arsenals.

Obama had broadly proclaimed his disarmament intentions during a 2007 campaign speech.

“Here’s what I’ll say as president: America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons.”

By 2010, as president, he was arguing: “We need to change our nuclear policy and our posture, which is still focused on deterring the Soviet Union – a country that doesn’t exist.”

Obama’s declaration came just as Russia was signing a major arms deal with Syria and began to revive its Cold War–era naval bases in the Middle East, including in the Syrian ports of Tartus and Latakia on the Mediterranean.

The joint CAP and IPS report, meanwhile, recommends the U.S. cease all further development of missile defenses.

The report goes through a list of current missile defense programs, including Ground-based Midcourse Defense, Airborne Laser, Kinetic Energy Interceptors and a number of others pushing for all programs to be cut.

“It is unwise to fund more advanced systems for missile defense while current ones have yet to be proven effective against their targeted threats,” complains the report.

The military’s vital Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation program is to be cut by $10 billion across the board.

Next on the chopping block: the complete cancelation of the second SSN-744 Virginia Class submarine. While the Unified Security Budget describes the new model as “unnecessary to address any of the threats facing the United States today” and “a weapon looking for an enemy,” the SSN-774 is designed for covert collection of intelligence, transportation of special operations teams and launching of tactical Tomahawk missiles – flexible capabilities tailored to rapid responses required by the 21st century’s conflicts with irregular combatants.

Similarly targeted for cancelation are the V-22 Osprey helicopter and the Navy and Marine Corps versions of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Combatting ‘global warming’

The 2012 Unified report sets the tone of its lofty agenda by demanding immediate reductions in the military’s already heavily slashed budget. But there is one exception requiring massive increases in funding – any spending that funds “alternative energy” or that focuses Defense Department resources on combating “climate change as a security threat.”

The report authors recommend investing “the lion’s share” of the few allotted military increases in addressing the “threat” of so-called climate change.

The report wants Obama to take billions of dollars from the U.S. military and instead use them for a “green stimulus.”

These groups also envision the military as a tool to fight so-called global warming. In 2011, the IPS released a 40-page CAP-endorsed report titled “The Green Dividend,” a term the IPS defines as “a major shift of resources from the military budget to sustainable energy.”

The IPS research paper identifies the Pentagon as the “largest institutional energy user – and greenhouse gas emitter – on the planet,” arguing that if it undertook a “crash program” to convert to renewable energy sources and clean vehicles, it could make a significant impact on global emissions.

The IPS calls on the Pentagon to contribute to a green world “by simply getting out of the way, by handing over unneeded military installations to be converted into green job incubators.”

The report lauds Obama’s first ever U.S. Global Development Policy, which was issued in September 2010, and declares that the primary purpose of our development aid is to pursue broad-based economic growth as the means to fight global poverty.

The report goes on to recommend that massive funds be sent to combat global woes, including an increase of $3.5 billion to “Global Health” investment, and $2.14 billion to support United Nations peacekeeping and ensure that the United States does not fall behind in U.N. payments.

The Center for American Progress also released a 52-page proposal, from January 2012, in which authors Michael Werz and Laura Conley lay out a plan for the U.S. military to be used as the delivery vehicle of aid to developing countries purportedly ravaged by so-called global warming

Further White House ties

Klein and Elliott write it is instructive that CAP got together with the IPS – a policy group infamous for its Cold War-era support of the Soviets and its long-standing crusade to diminish the U.S. military – all while pushing for the elimination of America’s nuclear arsenal.

“Fool Me Twice” exposes Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s own personal ties to the IPS, including his past advocacy for the group’s specific military recommendations.

The book also documents how key members of other organizations that sponsored the 2012 Unified Security Budget, such as the Connect U.S. Fund, can now be found at the top level of the Obama administration.

Another Unified Security Budget report sponsor is George Soros’s Open Society Institute.

“Just as ‘Unfit for Command’ provided the margin of defeat for John Kerry in 2004, ‘Fool Me Twice’ will ensure Obama serves only one term,” said WND Books publisher Joseph Farah.

Just as in 2008, when Obama concealed his true presidential plans behind the rhetoric of ending partisan differences and cutting the federal deficit, his 2012 re-election theme of creating jobs conceals far more than it reveals about his true agenda for a second term.

Most conservative books about Obama focus on his radical background and what he has done until now. A small number of ambitious projects attempt to show what America may look like after four more years of Obama based on generalities and what the president has already done.

While many are expressing general concerns over Obama’s future ambitions, “Fool Me Twice” lays bare the devastating details and consequences of a second Obama term as president.

The book is based on exhaustive research into Obama’s upcoming detailed presidential plans and policies, as well as the specific second-term recommendations of major “progressive” groups behind Obama and the Democratic leadership – the organizations that help craft legislation and set the political and rhetorical agenda for the president and his allies.

Here are a few highlights of dozens and dozens of second-term plans uncovered in “Fool Me Twice”:

Government-funded, neighborhood-based programs to better integrate the newly amnestied immigrants into society, including education centers and health care centers. A “federal solution” to ensure that the amnestied immigrants are treated “equitably” across the United States.

The recreation of a 21st century version of FDR’s Works Progress Administration program within the Department of Labor that would oversee a massive new bureaucracy and millions of new federal jobs.

Specific plans for a National Infrastructure Bank.This entity would “evaluate and finance infrastructure projects of substantial regional and national importance” and would finance “transportation infrastructure, housing, energy, telecommunications, drinking water, wastewater, and other infrastructures.”

Wresting control of the military budget from Congress by attempting to place an ”independent panel” in charge of military spending while slashing the defense budget in shocking ways.

The vastly reduced resources of the U.S. Armed Forces will be spread even thinner by using them to combat “global warming,” fight global poverty, remedy “injustice,” bolster the United Nations and step up use of “peacekeeping” deployments.

A new “green” stimulus program and the founding of a federal “green” bank or “Energy Independence Trust,” which would borrow from the federal treasury to provide low-cost financing to private-sector investments in “clean energy.”

Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief for WND and hosts “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s WABC Radio, the nation’s largest talk station. Klein’s program is one of only two weekend shows in the U.S. to make the Talkers Heavy Hundred official list of top American radio shows.

His previous books include “Red Army,” “The Manchurian President,” “The Late Great State of Israel” and “Schmoozing with Terrorists.”

Brenda J. Elliott is an award-winning historian, researcher and New York Times bestselling author. She is the blogger who created RezkoWatch, The Real Barack Obama, RBO and RBO2. She has appeared on hundreds of radio shows, contributed to numerous investigative articles and publications and is the co-author of “Red Army” and “The Manchurian President”.

Media interested in interviewing Klein or Elliott should contact Tim Bueler at media@wnd.com or (530) 401-3285.